Ann Holtgren Pellegreno – completed around the world flight in an Electra 10-A

Ann Holtgren Pellegreno, born in 1937, is best known in aviation circles as the women who completed an around-the-world flight in 1967, following a path close to Amelia Earhart’s 1937 attempt. She flew a Lockheed Electra 10-A, a sister plane to the Electra 10-E that Amelia Earhart flew. Ann, with a crew of three, completed the 28,000-mile commemorative flight in California. Ann’s Lockheed Electra 10-A is now on exhibit at The Museum of Flight in Seattle.

Ann’s aviator story began when she and her husband Don learned to fly in 1961. The two shared a love of flying and restoring planes and eventually built a hangar and a lighted runway on their farm. She obtained her private pilot’s license in 1961 and took her mother as her first passenger. Her mother did not know that Ann knew how to fly a plane! She went on to earn a commercial pilot’s, instrumentation, multi-engine licenses, and she’d became a flight instructor. The idea of flying Amelia Earhart’s path in a Lockheed Electra 10- being restored by Lee Keopke. In 1967, plane restored, Ann left for the around-the-world flight with a team of three: Lee, Bill Polhemus, a navigator, and co-pilot U.S. Air Force Col. Bill Payne. The team followed Earhart’s flight path closely, and in tribute to her, exactly 30 years on the Earhart disappeared, Ann dropped a wreath over Howland Island on July 2, 1967.  When the team landed back in Oakland, California, on July 7, Muriel Earhart Morrissey welcomed them lack. The sister to Amelia, Muriel, thanked Ann for completing her sister’s flight.

In 1971, Ann’s first book World Flight: The Earhart Trail was published by Iowa State University Press and received the Nonfiction Book Award from the Aviation/Space Writers Association. She went on to serve on the Iowa Aeronautics Commission from 1975 to 1975 and from 1974 to 1976 on the Iowa Department of Transportation Commission. Ann has been honored with a number of awards and recognitions, including induction into the International Forest of Friendship in Atchison, Kansas, the Iowa Aviation Hall of Fame, and the Michigan Aviation Hall of Fame, and the EAA Hall of Fame in the Antique-Classic division. She is now retired and lives in Texas.